The role of the talking head.

My spouse and I spent a week end in Rome two months ago. Long story why and not relevant, either. We saw amazing things, things that until that week end had not come through to us despite a lifetime of studying, television specials, and movies about Rome. Our week end was literally and figuratively an eye opener.

Take the half dozen Talking Heads of Rome. These antedate Beck and Hannity of Fox cable channel by five hundred years but have functioned for all that time in much the same way as the Fox talking heads today. This phenomenon began with a cobbler named Pasquino who was not a man to hold his tongue even though his era did not encourage free speech. A sorely stressed marble statue of Menelaus shielding the dead body of Patroclus (refer to Homer's Iliad for details) that used to serve as a stepping stone in the medieval sewer/street was set upright outside the cobbler's shop in 1501. (It is still there as are so many other things from ages past in the Eternal City. Rome is big but seems to have enough stuff for a hundred big cities.) The city's citizens beginning with Pasquino and continuing to our day write satirical comments on the times, particularly political comments, and stick them up onto the marble wreck. In this way the statues or heads talk. The satire is witty and well presented, making you think that the wonderful language skills of Rome's classical period continue to be practiced today. I will give one example. My examples are always long.

In the center of the piazza della Minerva there is the famous Egyptian obelisk atop Gian Lorenzo Bernini's elephant. (A Bernini design but Ercole Ferrata was the sculptor.) A brass plaque is fixed to the front of the church in the square (Santa Maria sopra Minerva) to monument the high water mark from a flood of the fiumi Tevere, or Tiber river. Our guide pointed this out and I asked him to stand by the plaque which he did. Then I asked him to point his finger at the line so I could take a picture. It seemed like a natural thing to do. The guide said most tourists ask him to do the same.

Later, while discussing the Talking Heads of Rome, he gave as an example of a posting a famous cartoon that featured a scandal ridden Italian politician named Fiumi. In the same way as the guide pointed to the high water mark of the fiumi or river, the cartoon showed a man pointing to the pubis of a naked woman. The caption read "Fiumi got up to here." Our guide assured us the people reading this knew to which woman the cartoonist was referring. And no, it was not Mrs. Fiumi.

The medium of the web log seems to serve as an adjunct to the Talking Heads--of Rome, of Fox cable networks, or of other similar outlets. And it seems to me that some of the wit and skill of the Romans--ancient, medieval, or contemporary--would be a comfort to us all in these eventful times. The strident, clumsy, ugly, and mean spirited editorial comments of Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich do not uplift or inspire Americans to greatness. Nor do these bitter commentaries promote civility, harmony, or understanding. We need information, true enough. But "Fiumi got to here" can be told in more agreeable ways than those used by Dowd and Rich. I hope we Americans evolve less toward them and more toward Pasquino et al.